I can top that. I made the horrid mistake of actually donating money to a candidate once. For years afterward his party bombarded me with calls and mailings asking me for more. I've always heard of "sucker lists" for salesmen. Guess they have them for political fundraisers too. Never again.
They're not violating the do not call law. They're just taking advantage of loopholes for non-profits, survey calls, political calls, and companies you've done business with in the last 90 days.
Doesn't matter, it WILL NOT let you hang up on them, no matter how many seconds you leave the phone on the hook. I noticed this when a friend mentioned that he had tried to hang up on one and couldn't. The next time I got one, I tried the same thing and sure enough, it wouldn't let me hang up on it until it had played all the way through. This isn't the case with normal telemarketer calls, only the "robo-calls" (which used to be just political hit-jobs, but now have expanded out to sales calls too).
I *am* on the "do not call list." I still get at least two or three of these calls a day. They just masquerade themselves as "surveys" or non-profits (or give me the "We are calling on behalf of your credit card company to tell you about this great offer..." line) to get around the do not call list.
What pisses me off is that Bioware has essentially abandoned the console gamers that made KOTOR such a bestseller. KOTOR sold something like three times the number of games on the Xbox than than it did on the PC. And Bioware is repaying us by making a PC-only MMO? WTF?!?!? Are they TRYING to piss off fans and lose money?
The only criticism that I have is that it rings my phone at all (for an unrecognized number). I would prefer a system where an unknown caller (those not on the white list) has to first identify themselves as a real person (by keying some numbers) and then leave a message. The phone should only actually ring for whitelisted callers, everyone else should have to prove themselves human for the privilege of leaving a message.
The most annoying calls now are the "robo-calls." What really infuriates me about them is that I can't seem to hang up on them (if you try to hang up and pick up the phone later, the message is still playing). This pisses me off because it means that my phone company is somehow in cahoots with these bastards and is essentially letting them hijack my phone line without my permission. What if I needed to make an emergency call and had to wait for the robo-call to go through all its "great offers" before I could even dial out?
I played Kobra (a Star Wars MUD) in the mid-late 1990's. It was as addictive as crack to me. I was way more addicted to that game than anything else I've ever played before or since (including WoW). And, unlike mordern MMO's, it was all FREE!
Actually, they did, years ago. People like you just refuse to listen because the "crashed aliens" story sounds so much sexier than a boring old Cold War spying program.
From the middle ages up until the Age of Reason in the 18th century, there were thousands of witnesses to demons, witches screwing Satan, warlocks flying through the air, vampires, werewolves, and assorted other religious and mythological shit (varying according to the beliefs of the witness, of course). Even today, there are thousands of people who will claim that they saw the Virgin Mary in a bush in Georgia (these witnesses are all Catholic), or had a vision of Allah holding the Quran (these witnesses are all Sufi Muslims), or witnessed a faith healer heal the sick (these witnesses are all Christan Protestants), etc.
The one detail the really cracks me up from the Hill "abduction" (aside from the fact that the Hill's alien spacecraft is obviously straight out of the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still") is Ms. Hill claiming that, when she asked the alien where he was from, he pulled down a paper map to show her. Aliens who have the technology to travel across interstellar space and they're still using rolled-up 2-dimensional paper maps?!?! Hilarious stuff.
Reminds me of an essay I read once from Asimov's editor Gardner Dozois on the pitfalls of writing bad science fiction. The most common mistake of shitty wannabe science fiction writers, Dozois maintains, is that the "worlds" they create look laughably like our own contemporary world with just a thin new "scifi" coating slapped on top of it (i.e. they still all drive the same old cars, but now they're called "space cars").
What about Bigfoot? Is he supernatural? The Loch Ness monster lives at a depth we're unable to observe on our own terms. Is he real too? I mean, while we're in fantasyland, might as well catch ALL the sights.
Yes, I suppose it could be aliens expending vast amounts of energy and traveling across distances that the human mind can't even easily comprehend just to do cursory exams of human biology. But may I also suggest the more radical idea that it's just a bunch of ignorant yahoos mistaking a rape nightmare for an anal probe and interpreting simple sleep paralysis as being held down by aliens?
The U.S. Air Force in 1947 (at that time still party of the Army) had just begun the first two of many programs (Project Mogul and Project Moby Dick) that would involve floating high altitude balloons over the Soviet Union to listen to and photograph military and industrial facilities (remember, this was before satellites and high altitude reconnaissance aircraft like the U-2), mostly to keep an eye on Soviet atomic aspirations. If the Soviets caught wind of this, so soon after WWII, it would have caused a major international incident and ratcheted up Cold war tensions (which were already high enough in the face of the establishment of the iron curtain). So when one of these things went down in Roswell, you bet your ass they wanted to shut people up about it.
Little did they realize that their efforts to shut people up about what they saw would ultimately provide the perfect cover (leading people to assume they were covering up aliens rather than the secret spy programs they were REALLY covering up).
F-16 were chasing above their territory, and which went through the sound barrier over urban areas without producing any supersonic bang.
A mirage, a light anomaly, a meteor, another aircraft seen at a skewed distance, a hoax by the pilots, a falling satellite---and about 1,000 other possible explanations that are all much more reasonable than intergalactic alien visitors traveling almost incomprehensibility vast intergalactic distances only to buzz our aircrafts and probe our hillbillies.
Actually, iTunes doesn't. A lot of podcasters have their podcasts on iTunes for free, for example.
And my local grocery store doesn't just let random outsiders come in and drop off stuff for sale, period. The store (or parent company) buys all the products directly from chosen vendors and then resells them in the store. The XNA community model would be more analogous to a farmer coop or a farmer's market. And as long as you pay your rent for a stall at such a market (much like the XNA creator's club yearly fee), they don't care what you charge for your wares (or if you even charge at all).
Nonsense. There are no aliens here, just good old natives of Earth. You really need to just sit down and relax for a few hours. On an unrelated note, where do you live and is anyone else there with you?
Considering that most of the people whose asses they probe are smelly rednecks with beer guts and only a few teeth, I would question their taste. You travel 100's of light years, only to forgo probing Natalie Portman for some trailer park skank?!?! Aliens are indeed strange.
The U.S. government weren't trying to cover up aliens at places like Roswell, they were covering up their secret spy aircraft. Why do you think most of these "UFO cover-ups" involved strange craft spotted near isolated air force bases at the height of the Cold War? Project Blue Book wasn't about little green men, it was about making sure no one had gotten a good look at their latest prototype stealth planes and also checking to see if any hillbillies might have actually spotted any Soviet spy planes in the area.
No alien civilization is expending the mammoth amount of resources needed to traverse the vast distances of interstellar space just to stick a probe up your ass. Deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously we must fight to overthrow this oppressive government that we set up!
Now, now, that's hardly fair to Hitler.
I can top that. I made the horrid mistake of actually donating money to a candidate once. For years afterward his party bombarded me with calls and mailings asking me for more. I've always heard of "sucker lists" for salesmen. Guess they have them for political fundraisers too. Never again.
They're not violating the do not call law. They're just taking advantage of loopholes for non-profits, survey calls, political calls, and companies you've done business with in the last 90 days.
Doesn't matter, it WILL NOT let you hang up on them, no matter how many seconds you leave the phone on the hook. I noticed this when a friend mentioned that he had tried to hang up on one and couldn't. The next time I got one, I tried the same thing and sure enough, it wouldn't let me hang up on it until it had played all the way through. This isn't the case with normal telemarketer calls, only the "robo-calls" (which used to be just political hit-jobs, but now have expanded out to sales calls too).
I *am* on the "do not call list." I still get at least two or three of these calls a day. They just masquerade themselves as "surveys" or non-profits (or give me the "We are calling on behalf of your credit card company to tell you about this great offer..." line) to get around the do not call list.
If I had great social skills and a strong will, I wouldn't waste my time in an MMO. I'd be a REAL LIFE hero.
What pisses me off is that Bioware has essentially abandoned the console gamers that made KOTOR such a bestseller. KOTOR sold something like three times the number of games on the Xbox than than it did on the PC. And Bioware is repaying us by making a PC-only MMO? WTF?!?!? Are they TRYING to piss off fans and lose money?
The only criticism that I have is that it rings my phone at all (for an unrecognized number). I would prefer a system where an unknown caller (those not on the white list) has to first identify themselves as a real person (by keying some numbers) and then leave a message. The phone should only actually ring for whitelisted callers, everyone else should have to prove themselves human for the privilege of leaving a message.
The most annoying calls now are the "robo-calls." What really infuriates me about them is that I can't seem to hang up on them (if you try to hang up and pick up the phone later, the message is still playing). This pisses me off because it means that my phone company is somehow in cahoots with these bastards and is essentially letting them hijack my phone line without my permission. What if I needed to make an emergency call and had to wait for the robo-call to go through all its "great offers" before I could even dial out?
I played Kobra (a Star Wars MUD) in the mid-late 1990's. It was as addictive as crack to me. I was way more addicted to that game than anything else I've ever played before or since (including WoW). And, unlike mordern MMO's, it was all FREE!
Split-screen multiplayer ain't so fucking great when you don't have any friends.
Actually, they did, years ago. People like you just refuse to listen because the "crashed aliens" story sounds so much sexier than a boring old Cold War spying program.
Unless you name is Scarlett Johansson, your ass ain't so great.
From the middle ages up until the Age of Reason in the 18th century, there were thousands of witnesses to demons, witches screwing Satan, warlocks flying through the air, vampires, werewolves, and assorted other religious and mythological shit (varying according to the beliefs of the witness, of course). Even today, there are thousands of people who will claim that they saw the Virgin Mary in a bush in Georgia (these witnesses are all Catholic), or had a vision of Allah holding the Quran (these witnesses are all Sufi Muslims), or witnessed a faith healer heal the sick (these witnesses are all Christan Protestants), etc.
You believe in all that too?
The one detail the really cracks me up from the Hill "abduction" (aside from the fact that the Hill's alien spacecraft is obviously straight out of the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still") is Ms. Hill claiming that, when she asked the alien where he was from, he pulled down a paper map to show her. Aliens who have the technology to travel across interstellar space and they're still using rolled-up 2-dimensional paper maps?!?! Hilarious stuff.
Reminds me of an essay I read once from Asimov's editor Gardner Dozois on the pitfalls of writing bad science fiction. The most common mistake of shitty wannabe science fiction writers, Dozois maintains, is that the "worlds" they create look laughably like our own contemporary world with just a thin new "scifi" coating slapped on top of it (i.e. they still all drive the same old cars, but now they're called "space cars").
What about Bigfoot? Is he supernatural? The Loch Ness monster lives at a depth we're unable to observe on our own terms. Is he real too? I mean, while we're in fantasyland, might as well catch ALL the sights.
Yes, I suppose it could be aliens expending vast amounts of energy and traveling across distances that the human mind can't even easily comprehend just to do cursory exams of human biology. But may I also suggest the more radical idea that it's just a bunch of ignorant yahoos mistaking a rape nightmare for an anal probe and interpreting simple sleep paralysis as being held down by aliens?
Even if you could use it for gaming, it wouldn't do you any good unless the game were specifically built to take advantage of multiple CPU's.
The U.S. Air Force in 1947 (at that time still party of the Army) had just begun the first two of many programs (Project Mogul and Project Moby Dick) that would involve floating high altitude balloons over the Soviet Union to listen to and photograph military and industrial facilities (remember, this was before satellites and high altitude reconnaissance aircraft like the U-2), mostly to keep an eye on Soviet atomic aspirations. If the Soviets caught wind of this, so soon after WWII, it would have caused a major international incident and ratcheted up Cold war tensions (which were already high enough in the face of the establishment of the iron curtain). So when one of these things went down in Roswell, you bet your ass they wanted to shut people up about it.
Little did they realize that their efforts to shut people up about what they saw would ultimately provide the perfect cover (leading people to assume they were covering up aliens rather than the secret spy programs they were REALLY covering up).
Yes, it's possible. It's also possible that unicorns are real, and are just really good at hiding.
flying saucers on medieval paintings
You mean circles?
F-16 were chasing above their territory, and which went through the sound barrier over urban areas without producing any supersonic bang.
A mirage, a light anomaly, a meteor, another aircraft seen at a skewed distance, a hoax by the pilots, a falling satellite---and about 1,000 other possible explanations that are all much more reasonable than intergalactic alien visitors traveling almost incomprehensibility vast intergalactic distances only to buzz our aircrafts and probe our hillbillies.
Actually, iTunes doesn't. A lot of podcasters have their podcasts on iTunes for free, for example.
And my local grocery store doesn't just let random outsiders come in and drop off stuff for sale, period. The store (or parent company) buys all the products directly from chosen vendors and then resells them in the store. The XNA community model would be more analogous to a farmer coop or a farmer's market. And as long as you pay your rent for a stall at such a market (much like the XNA creator's club yearly fee), they don't care what you charge for your wares (or if you even charge at all).
Nonsense. There are no aliens here, just good old natives of Earth. You really need to just sit down and relax for a few hours. On an unrelated note, where do you live and is anyone else there with you?
Considering that most of the people whose asses they probe are smelly rednecks with beer guts and only a few teeth, I would question their taste. You travel 100's of light years, only to forgo probing Natalie Portman for some trailer park skank?!?! Aliens are indeed strange.
The U.S. government weren't trying to cover up aliens at places like Roswell, they were covering up their secret spy aircraft. Why do you think most of these "UFO cover-ups" involved strange craft spotted near isolated air force bases at the height of the Cold War? Project Blue Book wasn't about little green men, it was about making sure no one had gotten a good look at their latest prototype stealth planes and also checking to see if any hillbillies might have actually spotted any Soviet spy planes in the area.
No alien civilization is expending the mammoth amount of resources needed to traverse the vast distances of interstellar space just to stick a probe up your ass. Deal with it.